Learnt Mistakes
by MadMonkette
Summary: No matter how far you run, it's difficult to escape the past. SS/OC


All recognizable characters and concepts are the property of the devine J.K.Rowling. Please don't sue me, because it really wouldn't be worth your time :) I am *so* counting the days until the 5th book comes out!!! .......................................................................... BTW, I'm sorry for starting a new story instead of updating one of my other 2. I've finally got a good idea of where JACM is going to go, though, so look for updates within the next week. Feel free to flame me if I don't deliver :) Also, puh-lease be patient while I get through with developing the OC a bit, ok? I promise to get back to our regularly scheduled SS/OC goodness after this first part. ..........................................................................  
  
Learnt Mistakes .................. Marlyn sighed and looked out the window.  
  
Her fingers traced the thick, leaded glass that separated her from the rest of the world. There were no bars on the window; there didn't need to be. The room was warded to its teeth (if any room could be said to have teeth, it would be this one). Hargrave Prison, the United State's wizarding prison, had been completely rewarded following the defection of British dementors to the ranks of evil.  
  
Very few people got inside of Hargrave Prison, and even fewer got out ~ none accidentally.  
  
The problem was...she didn't have to be here. With one small choice, and a few sentences to the guardstone monitoring her cell, she could be as free as the birds swooping so mockingly close to her window. Once, she could have reached out with her senses and mentally joined their play. Still could, if not for the blocking wards.  
  
That's what the choice to be free would cost. How could you be free with half of your life robbed from you? Even if it was a part that you hadn't really known existed for most of your life? What would it be like to live without the power of magic?  
  
Two years ago, she could have answered that question. Or thought she could have. Marlyn had always vaguely known that the world worked differently for her. She always knew when it was going to rain, and her teachers always seemed to forget assignments on the same days that she did. It had just been one of those things: a feature of the world that had seemed likely to vanish if too closely questioned. And, anyway, it was probably just her imagination playing tricks on her. That's what her mother had told her when she had come home with stories about the faeries playing in the stream behind their house.  
  
Then, one day, two men in raincoats had caught her at the bus station. She thought it was a mugging, but she couldn't scream, couldn't run away. Both of them had the extra ..outline..that she had noticed about certain people, the one that made them seem more real. She tried to draw breath to scream. Then, suddenly, they were at the school. Although she hadn't known what it was back then.  
  
The school, such as it was, had been the pet project of an Archmagus gone wrong. Too much demon summoning, too much death magic, and pretty soon what remained was hard to identify as human. That was how it had gone with him.  
  
He had decided how wonderful it would be if muggleborn wizards could be recruited to his..hobbies..before their minds were polluted by conventional wizard thinking. Such children would be fresh and clean; he could write his words into their minds like he would onto a blank slate. His flunkies had all agreed that it was a wonderful idea, and set about to find some likely children for his 'school'.  
  
It wasn't hard. In the US, many muggleborn wizards still went without formal training. Marlyn often wondered how many problems could be avoided if the wizarding schools took a more active interest in the muggle community. Of course, she had heard rumors of atrocities in Britain that made her think that *too* much interest could be just as bad.  
  
She had learned so many things since then. Some of them strange and wonderful..and some terrible. There had been deaths, and she had been involved. The council of wizards that had tried their cases wasn't holding the students directly responsible, but the fact remained that they had killed. A muggleborn couldn't be expected to understand why blood magic was an abomination, but even they ought to know that murder was wrong.  
  
The teachers, those that had been caught, had all been put to death. Magical justice was swift in the United States, and human sacrifice exacted its stiffest penalty. The students, all but Marlyn, had been stripped of their powers and memories and sent back to their parents.  
  
Marlyn had earned a second option.  
  
Public discovery of the school had come by accident. A foreign-born dragon warden had been tracking a rogue Mexican Violet-Tail up through North Texas. Unfortunately, the dragon had also attracted the attention of several of the school's teachers; they wanted its heart and scales for a potion. The warden had simply been a bit of bonus.  
  
Marlyn had just graduated into second-rank status, and, for the first time, had been granted the privilege of having some unsupervised time. Her fear for her captors had, if anything, grown with her knowledge of their abilities. However, each new 'class project' in which she was forced to participate was pushing her closer to no longer caring about her own safety. Exercises that were meant to remove her emotions were working, but not to the intended effect. The 'exam' for her new place had been the final straw. She knew that she had the skills to act. When she saw the warden in the dark, dank cells where prisoners were kept beneath the school, she knew that her chance had come.  
  
She appropriated him for an experiment. After faking his death, she managed to smuggle him out of the school. That was all that she could do, but all that was needed. The teachers claimed that over 100 miles of wilderness lay between them and the nearest muggle settlement. Supposedly, it provided a 'clean' zone for their magic. Without a wand, and prevented from apparating by the school's wards, most wizards would have been unable to make the journey. The warden had survived and returned with the authorities. During the raid, Marlyn had helped to drain the wards on the school, helping the attackers to overcome them. At the end of the day, with most of the dark wizards and all of the students in police custody, the warden had stepped forward to identify Marlyn as the student who had helped him.  
  
Within hours, the accused, Marlyn included, were standing before a court. Even in the wizarding justice system, the accused were given a trial and the chance to speak. With the overwhelming evidence at hand, and the ability to literally make walls speak, there was not much point in pleading innocent.  
  
Instead, Marlyn had asked for a second chance. Hadn't she acted on her first opportunity to escape the school? Hadn't she helped Warden Weasley to escape? Furthermore, she'd thought that she was a muggle prior to the kidnapping; what chance had she had to get a proper education? Hadn't she earned the right to try to become a normal, law-abiding wizard?  
  
The wizard court had agreed. They didn't acquit her, though; they had already seen what could come of letting her run around untrained. However, if one of the accredited wizarding academies would agree to accept her, then she could be released into their custody. If she engaged in no further criminal activity, her record would be sealed when she came into her majority on her eighteenth birthday.  
  
The problem was...none of the schools wanted her. She had just gotten back a reply from her twenty-fifth application; she had now officially been refused by every school on the American continent. This one had at least been polite; several of them had bluntly stated that there was no room for a fifteen-year-old former dark witch at their school. She was too old and too tainted.  
  
She sighed, feeling frustrated. Banging her head against the wall was beginning to become an option. Then again, maybe not - best keep that until she started getting refusals from the European schools. .................................. Next up, Charlie Weasley offers a helpful suggestion! More reviews means faster updates, so please feed the author :) *puppy-dog eyes* 


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